flaws in a shower of
golden sparks; green as the pulp of a Champagne grape; the drums of
jeopardy! Murder and loot; he could understand.

Immediately after the patient was put to bed Cutty changed. A
nondescript suit of the day-labourer type and a few deft touches of coal
dust completed his make-up.

"I shan't be back until morning," he announced. "Work to do. Kuroki will
be at your service through the night, Miss Frances. Strike that Burmese
gong once, at any hour. Come along, Harrison."

"Want any company?" asked Harrison, with a belligerent twist to his
moustache.

Cutty laughed. "No. You run along to your lambs. I'm running with
the wolves to-night, old scout, and you might get that spick-and-span
uniform considerably mussed up. Besides, it's raining."

"But what's to become of Miss Conover? She ought not to remain alone in
that apartment."

"Well, well! I thought of that, too. But she can take care of herself."

"Those ruffians may call up the hospital and learn that we tricked them.

"And then?"

"Try to force the truth from Miss Conover."

"That's precisely the wherefore of this coal dust. On your way!"

Eleven o'clock. Kitty was in the kitchen, without light, her chair by
the window, which she had thrown up. She had gone to bed, but sleep was
impossible. So she decided to watch the Gregor windows. Sometimes the
mind is like a movie camera set for a double exposure. The whole scene
is visible, but the camera sees only half of it. Thus, while she saw
the windows across the court there entered the other side of her mind
a picture of the immaculate Cutty crossing the platform with Johnny
Two-Hawks thrown over his shoulder. The mental picture obscured the
actual.

She had called him old. Well, he was old. And no doubt he looked upon
her as a child, wanting her to spend the night at a hotel! The affair
was over. No one would bother Kitty Conover. Why should they? But it
took strength to shoulder a man like that. What fun he and her father
must have had together! And Cutty had loved her mother! That made
Kitty exquisitely tender for a moment. All alone, at the age when new
friendships were impossible. A lovable man like that going down through
life alone!

Census taker of alien undesirables; a queer occupation for a man so
famous as Cutty. Patriotism--to plunge into that seething revolutionary
scum to sort the dangerous madmen from the harmless mad-men. Courage and
strength and mental resource; yes, Cu